Sharing art is almost as important as making it for Collin Cousart (BFA '18). As the Studio Coordinator at the Main Line Art Center, Cousart helps community members in Haverford, Pennsylvania find outlets for their creative passions.

“There are a lot of classes for adults, teens, and kids so I help people sign up for classes, administer refunds and deal with cancellations, as well as working in the gallery,” he said.

Talking to people about art and art classes is nothing new for Cousart. While a student at PAFA, he joined the admissions student ambassador team because he wanted to talk to students just like him: people considering PAFA after community college.
 

“I wanted to go back to community colleges and recruit people to come to PAFA,” he said,

Initially, after high school, Cousart moved to New York to study psychology but realized the city and the major wasn’t for him.

“I really liked psychology and I originally didn’t know if I wanted to go into the arts because I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do so I tried psychology,” he said. “It didn’t work out, to get anything out of psychology you have to have your PhD.”

He left New York and transferred to Montgomery County Community College.

“When I went back to community college I kind of had a crisis of 'I don’t know what to do',” he said. “I thought I’d take an art class because I like art and then it just grew from there.”

PAFA kept coming up on his radar as a possible next step.

“If you take any American art history class the first chunk of it is PAFA,” he said. “All of the art history classes I was taking kept mentioning PAFA. The professor would say, ‘Go check this out at PAFA’ and ‘So–and-so artist went to PAFA’.”

A professor and PAFA alum recommended the Academy to him and Cousart got firsthand experience of the school by visiting friends who enrolled.

“A lot of friends I had at Montco actually came to PAFA a year before I did and I was visiting them in the city,” he said. “Originally I went to New York City and I hated it. I’ve been a Philly person my whole life so I wanted to stay in Philly.”

At PAFA, Cousart saw his work begin to change. He originally focused on portrait painting but found himself making more surrealist work by his final year in his private studio. All 4th year BFA students are provided with studio working space. They have 24-hour access to the studios.

“I went into my studio year thinking I would do these crazy cool portraits and then I started them and they weren’t working out or I enjoyed them but I didn’t really care for it,” he said. “I took a little break and wandered around and got inspiration from other things and started trial and error of doing different things. I latched onto surrealist kind of work and my critics saw that spark there and said keep going.”

The encouragement of his critics and being in class with other devoted artists made Cousart work harder.

“The atmosphere of a community college art program is more laidback. A lot of people were taking art classes because they had a requirement to fulfill,” he said. “Half the class was kind of serious and then half the class didn’t care at all, so coming here where everyone was very serious was very refreshing.”

Even though it took Cousart some time to find his way, he appreciates the journey he went on to get to PAFA.

“I definitely learned a lot of great skills at my other school that helped me,” he said. “I had three years of school before I came to PAFA so on a maturity level I was better off than when I was 18.”